Secondary menu

You are here

Blogs

Bloomberg is reporting that Petards, a U.K.-based IP video firm, is considering a sale or major refinancing.
Negotiations also include the possible sale of some units, Sunbury, England-based Petards said today in a statement distributed by the Regulatory News Service.
"Discussions are at various stages of advancement and there can be no certainty that any of the approaches will lead to an offer being made,'' Petards said in the statement.
The surveillance systems maker, which has posted losses for eight straight years, sold its U.K. software business to BAE Systems Plc in January. The company said it would use the 2.5 million pounds from the sale to pay down debt.
Petards's 6.8 million pounds of current liabilities at the end of June exceeded its current assets of 6.3 million pounds, leaving Petards with no working capital, which companies use to maintain operations.
Who'd be interested in Petards? Well, any of the major brands who might be a little late to the IP ballgame, I guess, but most of those have already caught up. This is one company that might just be left on the vine to wither.
Wednesday morning, additional information:
This morning I received the statement from the Petards board:
The Board of Petards announces that it is in discussions with a number of parties concerning the potential sale of the Company and/or one of its divisions or, alternatively, a refinancing of the business by a third party. Such discussions may or may not lead to an offer being made for the Company or the acquisition of a division of the Company or a refinancing of the
business. The Board of Petards, which is being advised by Collins Stewart Europe Limited, wishes to stress that the approaches and the resulting discussions are at varying stages of advancement and there can be no certainty that any of the approaches will lead to an offer being made for the Company or the acquisition of any of its divisions or a refinancing of the business.
A further announcement will be made as and when appropriate.
That's pretty classic. So, to summarize, Petards is in discussions with a number of parties about either selling the company, selling a part of the company, or not selling the company and refinancing the company with a third party. However, there's no certainty any of those things will happen. No wonder the stock went up!

Ooh, I hate those meter reader guys. You know, the ones who spend their days driving up and down city streets in their golf cart-size trucks trying to bust people for running to the bank without depositing adequate change in the meter (can you tell I've been busted a few times?). Well, perhaps I would've been able to find a parking space in the bank lot if they had employed this company. Basically, the company uses security guards to monitor parking lots via video to ensure that people who are parking there are indeed conducting business at the respective owner's place of business.
My take on this article is two-fold: One, yes, it's a way to keep people from parking in private lots where they aren't doing business and, two, it keeps those security guards from dying of boredom. Based on the article you can tell these guards are excited to have something to do, too. The example they cite is about a guy who parked in a bank parking lot and then didn't go into the bank (!!).Although the driver insisted he had done business in the bank, Houle said he had the whole thing on camera. "(He) came back 40 minutes after (parking) without any proof that he went into the bank," Houle said.
The guards booted his car and charged him $75 to take it off. Apparently, it's working and freed up a number of available parking spots for bank users, but really, $75? That's a wee bit steep, in my opinion, but I guess somebody's gotta pay for those meter maids, I mean security guards.

Normally I don't pay much attention to the industry awards given out by Frost & Sullivan. Frankly, there are too many to keep track of and if I covered them all, I wouldn't have much room for anything else. However, I must admit I'm struck by the announcement today that IBM has been named the 2008 North American Video Surveillance Software Company of the Year.
Not that IBM isn't a great company capable of executing some great software for the physical security market. It's just that I've really heard almost nothing about them since they announced last year their entry into the physical market (for the second time), and all their acquisitions and noise lately has been focused on the IT security market. (Note in that link the reference to IBM's plans to spend $1.5 billion on IT security this year.)
Here's some explanation:
Frost & Sullivan identified the recipient of this award based on the following criteria: revenue and market-share growth; proof of success executing a restructuring strategy; new market penetration; marketing, promotion, and visibility of the company through various media; evidence of success through strategy innovation; technological innovation and leadership; increased name recognition; and improvement in customer satisfaction and loyalty levels.
So, I wouldn't have thought they'd created much revenue or market share yet. I guess they restructured and entered a new market, but I haven't been impressed by their visibility in the market (they were on the "other" ISC West floor) and I'm not sure how you could increase IBM's name recognition. Plus, I haven't heard a single integrator I've talked with mention them.
I guess I'm talking to the wrong people? Or Frost & Sullivan are just impressed by the three-letter reputation? If you're using IBM software and are impressed, let me know.

I'm surprised this is the first I've heard of an Internet campaign to recruit people to monitor IP cameras from the comforts of their own homes. It's a group called Virtual Vigilance, part of American Border Patrol, and they're placing IP cameras on the border with Mexico that can be monitored over the 'Net, provided you've got a user name and password. The idea is that people can sign up to monitor individual cameras, so that each camera is monitored 24/7, and volunteers can contact border guards if they see something suspicious.
These guys have at least done a little homework:
To maximize vigilance, viewing time is limited to 30 minutes, after which another volunteer takes over.
So, for each camera, the group needs, say, 12 rotating volunteers? Or as many as 48 if each person agrees to only take one shift a day? And each of those volunteers needs to commit to 365 days of vigilance? That adds up to a lot of people in a hurry if you're trying to cover any serious portion of the border. We're talking 2,000 miles of border here.
More power to them, I guess, but I can see this sort of thing possibly becoming a bit in vogue. Graffiti problem at the school? Get some volunteer parents to monitor cameras. Worried about sex offenders in your community? Set up cameras near day care centers and get volunteers to monitor them for signs the bad guys are in the area.
Hey, it's better than everyone just sitting home and watching soap operas, right?

Anyone watching 60 Minutes tonight saw a Flir thermal camera being instrumental in a search for Leonardo da Vinci's lost masterpiece, "The Battle of Anghiari," a mural that may reside behind a wall covered by a another painting. An art detective is trying to use the heat signature of the pigments da Vinci favored to prove it's there. Pretty neat.
View the preview here.

Sorry about my use of exclamation points lately. I hate to yell at you, but I don't think you can write the word earthquake without an exclamation point. They're kind of exclamatory events.
Anyway, an earthquake rumbled through Indiana this morning and the guys at Exacq, of course, got some documentation on video. It's not exactly movie-of-the-week exciting, but interesting nonetheless.
Check it out here.

Here's a little blurb about a Swiss company working to integrate "analysis modules for biochemical sensing" into textiles for health monitoring. It made me wonder how prevalent true health monitoring was in the industry and the logistics of central stations to incorporate it into their offerings? Granted, this isn't your average PERS monitoring, it involves the analysis of sweat, blood (and tears?). Per the company's Web site:
This allows for the first time the monitoring of body fluids via sensors distributed on a textile substrate and performing biochemical measurements.
I imagine the development of the specialty "sensing textiles" would be fairly complex, but I wonder about the requirements for monitoring? Could companies that already specialize in PERS and have medically trained operators easily incorporate this high level of medical monitoring into their systems? It's obviously a new technology, but the concept seems plausible to me. And frankly, I'm curious what these "sensing textiles" will look like. I have a hard time believing these techie guys will have even a remote sense of fashion (people have to wear these things, after all).

With apologies for lighting, a camera-shake that's slightly disconcerting, and general tardiness, here, for your perusal, is my much-hyped video blog about the recent ISC West show in Las Vegas. Like you weren't there.
This event didn't lend itself to video blogging in the way my recent Israel trip did, I'll admit. First, I was running around like a madman and didn't capture video of half the things I'd like to have shown you. Second, it's not like ISC West is all that visually appealing. Basically, it's a bunch of steel and plastic arranged in bright colors apparently meant to disorient you, like the rest of Vegas, so that you can never find your way out.
If you click on the ISC West tag at the bottom of this post, you'll get the collection of my thoughts on this year's events, but if I had to recap with an elevator pitch, as I have to in the upcoming video, I'd say there were two major themes: 1. Everybody is on the IP bandwagon now. Even the knuckle-draggers. Any lingering doubt about the future of the industry seems to have been cast aside, and people agree that using the network as a backbone for a security system is a good idea. There are variations on how this idea is applied and to what degree, but no debate on whether the central premise is correct. 2. Partnership (or, as my boss pronounces the word, p-p-p-partnership) is the new industry buzzword, where every company wants to prove they work with every other company. One storage company announces 30 partners, the next announces 31. Why? Because proprietary is the new curse word in the industry. If you're partnering, you can't be proprietary, right? Well, pretty much, I guess.
Anyway, on to the video. It is what it is:
And I know you readers have some kind of comment phobia, which I'm okay with, but this is your chance to weigh in on ISC West and tell me if you didn't get the same impressions. You just click on that word there, "comments," and then you make a comment. It's pretty easy. You can even be anonymous if you're worried those criticisms of ISC West might land you in Reed Exhibitions jail so that you find yourself against the back wall next year.
We were already on the back wall, so I don't have much to worry about.

Today, on the one-year anniversary of the tragedy at Virginia Tech University, the New York Times ran an OpEd that expresses reasonable concern about safety on college campuses, but manages to get it all wrong, in my opinion, on what colleges should do about security measures.
James Alan Fox , a professor at Northeastern University, clearly doesn't understand mass notification systems. I could excuse him not understanding the technology, but to implyÃ¢â‚¬â€as he seems to doÃ¢â‚¬â€ that mass notification systems could actually make campuses more dangerous is ridiculous, and irresponsible.
Fox is right about one thingÃ¢â‚¬â€he believes that universities need a well-trained security staff and staff in general. What he doesn't seem to get, is that security technologiesÃ¢â‚¬â€like mass notification and access control systemsÃ¢â‚¬â€can help a well-trained staff do its job.
Have you read this piece? Rest assured that lots of university types are reading it. Are you penning a letter to the editor or calling the editor to see if you can write an OpEd in response right now? The Times owes equal editorial space to an OpEd piece that dispels the myths Fox is creating.